


what's to come

by PepperPrints, restlesslikeme



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Bible Horror, Biblically Accurate Angel Forms, M/M, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 19:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20019436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperPrints/pseuds/PepperPrints, https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme
Summary: Post-Apocalyptic AU. Even without the Antichrist, both Heaven and Hell insist on Armageddon. Aziraphale is missing and Crowley sets out to find him, driving through a scorched Earth with a witch in his passenger seat.





	what's to come

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this story, the trial etc on "The First Day" and the events following never took place. A few very soft liberties have been taken with the canon timeline (and Angelic mythology), as well.

There was a garden here, once.

Under the sand and ash of things burned away, and things forgotten, there were roots. Trees, even, fruit bearing and otherwise. The feet that walk across the earth now are old enough to remember when this place was green, long before any of the lives they’ve wiped out were even a thought -- back at the beginning.

Maybe that’s why they chose this place, over all the others; maybe they felt owed. There’s certainly nothing to be reaped from the ground itself anymore, although they have little use for things like that anyways. No need to take coverage from the sun under lush foliage, no use for the clear, clean water that once flowed here. No use for paradise.

There’s a split in the horizon to the east, a tear in sky and earth and time. A figure stands at the access point, watching as the troops file in, losing track of how many it sees. Losing track of the days. Angels descend from Heaven and into Eden, receive their orders, then fly out as heralds to a War they’ve taken into their own hands.

It’s fitting, in the most grim way, that the place where everything Began is also where it Ends.

A shackle sits heavy around the figure’s ankle. Held to its post, it guards the eastern gate.

\--

For the second time since the Apocalypse began, Crowley has lost Aziraphale.

The Bentley doesn’t track mileage, and it’s likely for the best that it doesn’t. They’ve gradually lost any way of measuring how long they’ve been driving. A lot of the familiar landmarks have been burnt away, smothered under ash or crushed under foot of some great indescribable beast -- from Heaven or Hell... they each have their share -- and Crowley keeps driving all the same. He doesn’t know where he’s going, exactly, except vaguely that he’s going back towards Aziraphale.

Or so he hopes.

“Can I put some music on?” 

Very slowly, Crowley cranes his head towards the passenger side. The seat usually occupied by Aziraphale -- only ever occupied by Aziraphale -- now hosts the descendent of a Witch, who looks impassively at him from behind her glasses. 

“No,” says Crowley, very firmly, and she reaches into the glove box all the same. 

They’ve been driving for eight hours. That’s long enough to listen to the entirety of a Queen’s Greatest Hits album (UK Edition) precisely eight times; Anathema Device turns it off before they even reach two. 

\--

**1926**

It’s not until his 5th night in Chicago that Crowley finds him, wandering through the halls of some house party, weaving through crowds. He looks like a vision in a suit as white as his wings, tailored impeccably and -- for once -- perfectly with the times. Maybe that isn’t a surprise, though; Aziraphale has always has good taste, even if it’s often late. His undershirt is blue like the sky over Eden, tie sunflower yellow. For all the weeks he spent searching, then the days spent waiting for an opportunity to bump into him, Crowley somehow wasn’t expecting it to feel like this to see him again.

Like getting the wind knocked out of him. Like Aziraphale could burn the damnation right off of him, if he so chose.

He wonders, not for the first time, whether that’s how everyone feels about him. If it’s not so much a personal affectation as it is a symptom of Holy Divinity.

“My _dear_ boy,” Aziraphale beams when he sees him. There’s a looseness to his posture that betrays too much champagne, only further given away by how his fingers find Crowley’s elbow. He’s excited to see him -- it sends a sharp pang through Crowley’s chest. “I thought you would never wake up.”

“Thought I should see what all the fuss was about,” Crowley replies, blasé as ever. He’s trying not to stare at the flush of pink on Aziraphale’s cheeks, trying to strangle down his own guilt. “Couldn’t exactly have you spreading your heavenly influence over all the fun. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“I thought you might be avoiding me,” Aziraphale presses, the glint in his blue eyes somehow both concerned and prying all at once; testing the waters. “After our... disagreement.”

So he had been thinking about it. As embarrassed as Crowley is, some part of him still wants to press about it -- when did Aziraphale notice? Did he check? Did half a century’s worth of absence change his mind, or was Crowley just a footnote during that time? 

Crowley doesn’t ask any of those questions, as heavy as they are on his tongue. Aziraphale’s hand is still gripped to his elbow, forgotten, and lingering on the subject risks ruining the night altogether. Aziraphale loves parties, it would be a shame to spoil this one for him. 

“I bought a car,” Crowley says instead, swiping another glass of champagne from a passing waiter, his words as quick as his hand. He presses the glass into Aziraphale’s fingers, who takes it with a pleased expression. “Wanna see?”

It seems like the whole thing is as good as forgotten once Aziraphale has the chance to chide him, breathlessly, about his driving. 

\--

Placing himself is difficult. Crowley has spent a lot of time in this car, on this earth. A year ago, he would have said that he very likely could have found his way around most of it, given a map and the occasional stop for directions. Even that would be in the case of a lack of signposts, which there so rarely was. For every twisting road that they carved out, it seemed like someone was just as careful to make sure you knew how to navigate it. 

He’d had a lot of fun with that, in his time. Their time. The time that he’d had, here. Move a signpost or two, and you could ruin a whole day.

Of course, he usually had Aziraphale bickering along beside him as well, which helped more than he realized. That was before. It turns out that Heaven and Hell are fairly equally matched in their ability to wipe things off the map, in a very literal sense.

Anathema doesn’t comment much on the wasteland that stretches out in front of them, although Crowley knows she must feel the same things he does. An emptiness on all sides. A gaping thing, too big and all consuming to even bother trying to put a name to. The deathly feeling of Hell with all the open, empty space of Heaven for miles, and miles, and miles...

Every now and then the bleak, unnatural silence is broken by some more unnatural noise -- war sounds, sometimes close, sometimes further off. Trumpets will blare at any hour, seeming to be carried on the wind. Shrieks and metal and then again, that terrible silence.

In the back seat of the car, tucked around the handful of houseplants Crowley couldn’t bear to leave behind, Anathema sleeps. Her dark hair falls over her face, and Crowley wonders if it offers her any peace from the horror that the waking world has become. Aziraphale would have thought she was very brave, he thinks. She reminds him of the angel a little bit -- smart as a whip, all that bookishness only serving to wrap up something very steadfast underneath. 

Maybe not a little bit. Maybe quite a bit. Maybe enough to keep him from losing track of himself. 

Funny, Crowley realizes, how much of himself is tied up in his connection to someone else. 

Someone who’s now too far out of his reach. 

\--

In the middle of some scorched piece of earth, Anathema stands with her pendulum in one hand and Aziraphale’s stupid, obnoxiously tartan biscuit tin in the other. Crowley didn’t even bother pulling off the road before letting her out to try this again, because it’s not like there’s any other cars for miles. Leaning against the Bentley’s door, Crowley watches her and he grinds his jaw. 

There’s no such luck. Just like there hasn’t been any luck the last two times she tried. From her respectable distance from Crowley, perhaps she thinks he can’t hear her very guttural, very unladylike shout of sheer frustration. She composes herself quickly, returning like nothing happened, and Crowley certainly pretends he didn’t just watch her stomp her feet like one of the four children they left behind. 

(Left behind with one Newton Pulsifer, with instructions that he had to look after Them — but everyone else involved knew it’d be Them who looked after him)

“Nothing?” Crowley assumes, though he already knows the answer. 

“Can’t get a signal,” she explains as she climbs into the car, pocketing the pendulum and resting the tin on her lap. “I think we’re going the right way, but I can’t be sure. There’s... too much happening.” 

“That’s putting it lightly,” Crowley mutters, settling in behind the wheel once more. 

“Can’t you feel anything about him?” she asks. 

Crowley drums his fingers on the steering wheel. There are too many options to consider. One, much like Anathema’s problem: there might just be too much Angelic and Demonic energy swamping out every other signal. Or, Aziraphale is simply too far out of his reach. Or -- or the worst of them all. That one sends his stomach lurching, and he dismisses it as sharply as it crept up. 

“I mean,” Anathema presses. “You were an angel once too, weren’t you? Can’t you find your way to Eden? It’s holy ground.” 

Crowley wets his lips. He remembers Heaven vaguely. He remembers his fingers dipping into stardust and smearing it like fingerpaint, building nebulas and crafting constellations. He remembers talk of God’s new Earth and of Eden itself, and the unpleasant, nagging feeling it gave him that no one seemed to share... until he did find one kindred spirit, only to have him extend his hand and introduce himself--

Then came the Archangels, and the tiniest, gentlest push against his collarbone, that sent him careening back and the whole floor gave out under him. He was Falling so fast it scorched his wings black and his whole body cracked on impact. 

Instead of saying all that, Crowley starts the car and keeps driving. 

\--

“You’re doing a fantastic job, Aziraphale.”

Seeing Gabriel’s face isn’t a strict prerequisite to knowing that he sneers. Despite the war, he wears no armour and carries no weapon. There is no blood staining his sleek leather shoes, and his silver-lilac suit matches the sky behind him. 

Apocalypse or not, he remains a vision. Priorities. 

Aziraphale can’t say the same. Dried blood lingers on him, caked to his side, and it’s certainly not a war wound. The assault was a reprimand from his last attempt at escape -- which gained him nothing for his trouble except the dull ache down his flank. 

“Much better than you did the first time around -- I guess that comes from keeping a closer eye on you, hm? Keeps you from getting... distracted.”

The toe of his shoe nudges the heavy golden chain, thoughtful.

“I was worried when you said you didn’t want to, you know, pick up the sword. Join the glorious battle,” His lips turn down at the corners in exaggerated disappointment. “Uriel wanted to make an example out of you, especially after that whole... fraternizing thing came out, but it just seemed like such a _waste._ We’re still family, right? _”_

Aziraphale doesn’t answer. His sword is long gone, and Gabriel somehow talks less if he doesn’t have someone to interrupt.

“Anyways I think we landed on a good thing,” Gabriel continues, as if thrilled by his own benevolence. “I knew we could find a good place for you.”

Overly chummy, Gabriel reaches out and pats his shoulder in mockery of comradery. All the gesture does is send an ache through Aziraphale’s healing body, and he fights back wincing in response. 

It’s all he can do to retain what little pride he has.

“Keep up the good work,” Gabriel encourages. 

\--

It isn’t that Crowley is running towards the war, exactly, it’s just that he doesn’t know what other direction to go. Once the curtain is pulled back, neither side is subtle about launching their attacks. Angels are forming their army at what once was Eden, and if that’s where they’re keeping Aziraphale...

Well, there can’t be a crueler punishment, can there?

If Aziraphale isn’t there, at least maybe there’ll be someone he can shake down for answers. It isn’t his best plan; he still hasn’t even worked out how exactly he’ll get in without being discorporated upon entry, but it’s the only lead that he’s got.

So Crowley drives, and the witch alternates between whatever it is she studies now that prophecy has gone out of fashion, and keeping an eye on their surroundings. Every now and then she gets restless and tries the music again, but they’ve been on long enough that even if Crowley had packed something new for the drive (he hadn’t), it would have long since turned on him.

The nursery in the back is shrinking: Crowley has taken to planting something along the road whenever they stop to recalibrate. It gives him something to do while Anathema wanders and stomps and divines, and he thinks that Aziraphale would like the idea of it -- leaving the world better than the way you found it. Without a wicked agenda to follow, he’s finding himself attached to a different edict altogether -- he’ll have something to tell Aziraphale, when he finds him. Something to offer him, for the time that they’ve spent apart. 

None of the plants are suited to this terrain, but he has a few miracles left in him yet. As much as it pains him to spoil the greenery. 

He had plans for the new world. He’d known, of course, that eventually something like this would happen. He’d had his own ideas about what it would be, but he had figured they had at least another century before it eventually came around, and there had been things he wanted to do in the meantime without higher ups breathing down his neck.

Or breathing down Aziraphale’s, more precisely. 

Picnics. Dinners at the Ritz. Crowley wasn’t much for reading, but he’d entertained the idea of being read _to_ so much over the years that it had become something of a very private agony. He had been thinking of ways to very casually bring the idea up and then hopefully spend at least a week on it -- silencing every phone, every open window, every radio to be alone with Aziraphale’s voice and whatever daft, lovely book he might choose. 

For one glittering night, it had seemed like maybe Someday had finally rolled around.

...What a stupid thing to think.

\--

**4 HRS A.A. (After Adam)**

On the night before Aziraphale disappears, they hold hands on an empty bus. 

When it happens, Crowley goes very still, as if moving will startle Aziraphale into taking it back. Maybe it was an accident, or some little delirious symptom of his malaise, and it would be wicked of Crowley to take advantage of that for his own selfish reasons. But Aziraphale doesn’t withdraw, and heartbeat pounding, Crowley squeezes down tentatively on Aziraphale’s warm fingers, and his chest twists with mangled relief and utter desperation as Aziraphale squeezes back. 

For all of the years they had spent together, they had so rarely touched like this. Always side by side, always circling. Every interaction a carefully measured little daydream that could be broken if Crowley tried to take too much. Now, with Aziraphale’s fingers slotted so deliberately through his own, Crowley can hardly breathe.

There’s a sad smile lingering in Aziraphale’s face as they step through the door to Crowley’s flat. He holds his shoulders so deliberately straight, but there’s a tenseness to his jaw that betrays him. Apocalypse averted, and still putting on a brave face.

“No books,” Crowley murmurs, tilting his head to look at him, feeling like a spring too tightly wound. Aziraphale, in his foyer. The warmth of Aziraphale’s hand, still lingering between his knuckles. 

“Well,” Aziraphale says, hesitating for just a moment before he continues: “Not yet, I suppose.” 

\--

“Fuck,” Anathema whispers, her low voice hoarse with awe, her fingers curled around the open sill of the passenger’s side window. “Fuck.”

Idly, in the back of his mind, Crowley can hear the admonishment Aziraphale would make. He doesn’t make it himself, just lets Aziraphale’s absence sit heavily in his chest cavity instead. He tries to focus on that as he stares out at what she sees -- tries to hold onto that familiar pain to keep the cold fear that trickles through his veins from overtaking him entirely. Underneath them, the ground trembles.

“What is it?” she barely breathes, staring in transfixed horror. Anathema shudders, gripping her arms like she’s suddenly overcome with a chill.

“A Beast of Revelation,” Crowley quotes, low and somber. “ _And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a Beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy_.”

Its great feet thud, rattling the mirrors of the Bentley with it. The Beast towers above them, too vast to even be taken in fully, and as it walks it drips blood in its wake: seeping sickly from a wound upon on of its many heads, constantly weeping and healing and oozing.

Despite herself, Anathema starts to lean further towards the window, rather than cower away from it, and her hand reaches for the door handle.

Old habits die hard, and Crowley leans in towards her. “Can hear it speaking to you, can’t you?” he hisses softly. “Calling you to follow?”

Very gently, so as not to startle her, Crowley lays his hand over her wrist to stop her. Anathema only seems to notice what she was doing then and there, and she recoils, tucking her hand back against her chest.

They wait in silence as the great beast lumbers around them. It doesn’t seem to notice the Bentley below it, or the terrified passengers therein, moving along on its own course. There’s the patter of liquid against the roof of the car as it passes over them, a great distant groan from up above.

Eventually, there’s nothing left but its shape in the distance, and the sweat between their shoulders to remind them of its passing. 

\--

Now and then they’ll drive through a commune, or something that could be -- loosely -- defined that way. Humans flock together in times of distress; history has shown that, again and again. Every time Crowley is blown away by humanity’s wickedness, by their inventive cruelty and their disregard for each other and the world around them, they come back around and surprise him the other way.

Today, something nags in the pit of his belly as he looks out at their forlorn faces. There aren’t many of them in this group -- maybe a dozen that he can see, if that. There are little dilapidated cottages that dot what’s left of the road, most of their roofs falling in on themselves. It was probably a quaint little village at one point.

It isn’t the ruin of it that’s bothering him though, at least not any more than it usually does. There’s something else that raises the hairs on the back of his arms, and they’re nearly past by the time he realizes what it is.

“What are you doing?” Anathema asks, startled out of her reading by the sharp way Crowley pulls over the car. “Did you see something?”

Not yet.

“There’s a patrol coming,” Crowley answers, clicking his jaw as he tries to rack his brain. “Demons. I can smell them. Isn’t enough that they’ve ripped the whole bloody world apart -- they’ll have these people massacred by tomorrow morning if they find them here.” 

“What?” Anathema snaps her book closed, sitting forward all at once. “We have to get them out of there--”

“Oh, how do you propose we do that?” Crowley asks, lifting his hands from the steering wheel and spreading his fingers wide in demonstration. “Pile them all into the Bentley?” 

“Maybe some of them,” Anathema counters impatiently. “Can’t you miracle it into something bigger?” 

That’s her solution to everything, isn’t it? Can’t you miracle this? Hey, why not miracle that? If miracles for every little thing were so damn simple, they wouldn’t be in the middle of this Apocalypse now, would they? 

“Even if I could, where do you propose we take them?” Crowley says dryly, shrugging stiffly where he sits. “Where in all of this beautiful stretch of charred Earth do you imagine they’d be any safer?” 

For a moment, Anathema just watches him, regarding him levelly from behind her glasses. “He always talked about how wily you are,” she says coolly, with such a steady, sure confidence that it cuts like a knife. “How clever. He was so proud of it. Was he wrong?” 

Crowley’s skin pales, his stomach twisting. The mention of Aziraphale, even if indirectly, should feel like a slap -- or infuriate him, that she’s using the memory of him like a weapon. But it isn’t manipulative; it’s honest, so it just makes Crowley ache instead.

Because she’s right, and if Aziraphale was here, he’d say the same thing. 

“You’ll think of something.” 

Before Crowley can speak, she steps out of the car, and Crowley sits stupidly for a solid minute before he grips tight on the steering wheel and groans loudly in exasperation. 

Really, what did he expect to happen? For her to sit idly by? Did he expect himself to do the same? Would he really have kept driving, if Anathema wasn’t in the passenger seat? He keeps thinking she reminds him of Aziraphale, with her nose in a book and her earnest enthusiasm, and maybe the metaphor is more apt than he thinks. Maybe she’s just another angel on his shoulder. 

Exiting the Bentley, Crowley slams the door behind him. Not too far away, Anathema speaks to a huddled collection of survivors, and she waves her arm when she sees Crowley coming.

“Anthony!”

Crowley wets his lips. When he introduced himself to Anathema Device properly -- rather than a hurried nudge of elbows in the midst of the End of the World -- he hadn’t expected her to latch onto his first name quite so tightly. No one else ever did. So what was the harm? The harm, it seemed, was that she insisted on using it, and it gave Crowley an odd sense of displacement every time. 

Crowley joins in, and Anathema grins at the group before her. “This is my friend, Anthony Crowley,” she explains, very proudly and very sincerely. “We’re going to help you.” 

Their faces, marked with ash and dirty and misery, light up with something undeniably like hope, and Crowley sighs so deeply it moves his entire body.

“Okay, fine,” he relents, “let’s get it over with.” 

\--

**1958**

There’s a fiendish sort of satisfaction that comes from watching Aziraphale squirm in the passenger seat next to him. It’s not often that he ever deliberately takes pleasure out of making Aziraphale uncomfortable (he tries to avoid it, really) but sometimes his demonic nature shows through. Crowley only allows himself a glance every now and then -- more than that seems excessive, and he _is_ watching the movie, after all -- but every time he catches it from the corner of his eye, he can’t help but grin.

“Oh, it’s not so bad angel,” he laments, with what would be sympathy if he had less teeth showing. “I’m sure it’ll end happily. Maybe.”

Aziraphale huffs, smoothing out a paper napkin that looks sufficiently wrung out from all his anxious fussing. He hates all of these horror movies, Crowley knows, but _South Pacific_ is playing on screen 3 in an hour, and since they can never agree on what to see, they have a deal: two films, one pick each.

Crowley was delighted when this very American pastime finally made it across the ocean. The drive-in combines two of Crowley’s favourite indulgences: cheap cinema and anything to do with his car. The fact that it also involves spending close to four hours in said car with Aziraphale is only an afterthought, really. He certainly doesn’t spend any of that time making note of which of the stupid jokes Aziraphale laughs at, or yearning terribly to touch his face when the dramas get him weepy.

On the screen in front of them, a gruesome transformation is happening. Aziraphale, pale as a ghost, averts his eyes.

“Crowley,” he starts, turning himself deliberately in his seat _away_ from the film and reaching for the radio dial. He firmly turns down the volume, until the screaming in the speakers is more of a shrill whisper. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

“Right _now_?” Crowley sighs, but props his chin on his hand nonetheless, elbow resting in the window frame. It’s a classic aversion tactic: the story gets too gruesome or too suspenseful, and suddenly Aziraphale remembers every little item of business he’s had to discuss for the last three months. Still, Crowley will indulge him.

“You aren’t missing anything anyways,” Aziraphale argues, glancing at the screen disdainfully. “So yes. I just -- I’ve been meaning to ask since that whole business in the church, and I haven’t gotten a chance. Which is my own fault, I should have made the time, but -- I’m afraid I haven’t been sure how to bring it up.”

Something like dread starts to trickle down Crowley’s spine. Pressing his lips together, he waits. 

“Would you... prefer if I were to start calling you Anthony?” Aziraphale continues, looking so terribly earnest that Crowley can’t even laugh at him right away. 

He’d been expecting something about war, or holy water, or... murdered nazis. Worse, maybe, something about those damned books. Instead, Aziraphale wants to get sentimental over his name while some teenager on the screen gets dismembered.

“I can if you’d like,” Aziraphale presses on sincerely. “I hadn’t meant to snub it when you brought it up, it just caught me off-guard. It’s a fine name. I’ve gotten rather attached to Crowley, but with time I think Anthony will suit you very --”

“Oh shut up,” Crowley answers, and he is laughing now, openly bemused. He reaches into the bucket on Aziraphale’s lap, grabbing up a fistful of popcorn and bringing it to his mouth. “Crowley’s fine. I’m Crowley. I’ve gotten _rrr_ ather attached to it too.”

As Crowley rolls his tongue, deliberately mocking, Aziraphale clucks his own in reply. Seeming a bit self-conscious now, Aziraphale glances back at the movie to avoid Crowley’s stare -- only to immediately regret witnessing the horrors depicted on the screen, so he suddenly becomes very interested in his popcorn instead.

Something sinks in Crowley’s belly, and he has to catch himself sharply. It’s all the better. It was a poor subject to linger on anyway, Crowley thinks, as he watches the light from the big screen casting broad shadows over Aziraphale’s face. 

Attachments.

\--

“May I pass, Guardian of the Eastern Gate?”

Wearily, Aziraphale lifts his head. Michael steps into his field of vision, clad in shimmering armour and alight as if they held their own personal sun. The mockery doesn’t even sting that much anymore, nor does the superior way in which Michael smiles at him. 

“I’m off to fight,” they tell him, “as is Written.” 

As if Aziraphale doesn’t know the Writing himself -- as if he doesn’t know it perhaps better than any other Angel in Heaven. As if he hasn’t studied and hoarded and scraped through every rare, odd Bible off of the surface of Earth, coveted it and learned all of its intricacies, marveled at its hypocrisy and noted its contradictions. 

“My victory is written as well,” Michael reminds, “against the great dragon named Satan.” 

Feigning thoughtfulness for a moment, Michael’s voice goes deceptively soft. “Although, where it’s written, Satan is _also_ called the great serpent,” they continue. “But we both know that wasn’t Satan, don’t we?”

Aziraphale holds his tongue. In another time, he might’ve leapt at the invitation to follow that remark: yes, the Bible wanders in ways that they _know_ to be incorrect. Isn’t that enough to start you wondering? Isn’t that enough to make you question? 

But the context is too dire; the bait too clear. Michael shrugs. “Perhaps that just means I’m to slay them both,” they conclude loftily. “Two fallen angels: the master and the servant. Dragon and serpent.” 

Aziraphale feels icy inside, and Michael leans in close. “Is there anything you’d like me to say to him?” they ask, voice dripping honey, as if they’re being unbearably generous. “Any last words you’d like me to utter to your dear serpent before I strike him down into ash and dust on my sword?” 

Aziraphale lunges forward on stupid, furious instinct, and he pays for it. The chain at his ankle is abruptly taut, sending him lurching back, tumbling gracelessly into coarse sand, and Michael laughs down at him.

They leave, haloed and armed for war, and Aziraphale forces himself once again to stand. 

It’s not until later that the implication finds him, one tiny piece of hope, glittering like gold:

Crowley is alive. 

\--

“Is this really how it’s supposed to happen?” Anathema asks, and Crowley’s eyes leave the road to fix her with a look. “Armageddon, I mean.” 

“What? You don’t know?” he says. “You haven’t read the Bible? I thought you were some sort of expert on this stuff.” 

“I am,” Anathema clarifies curtly, raising her chin. “I’m an occultist in the broadest sense possible. I just… well. The things we’ve seen haven’t exactly been true to what’s written. Besides, the modern Bible is a parody of what it should be -- edited heavily by huge lot of stupid men with a selfish, misogynistic agenda.”

Crowley, who spent the most formative Biblical years (including the Crucifixion itself) as the “fairer” sex, knows exactly what she means. “Amen to that, sister,” Crowley says, unironically. 

Anathema, on the other hand, who knows nothing about Crowley’s occasionally wandering gender presentation, isn’t sure if the demon is making fun of her, so she drops the subject. That’s fine by him -- he doesn’t know how to explain to her that no, none of this is right. If anything it’s like some crude theatre being played out by actors only vaguely familiar with the script, to the absolute downfall of everyone else. 

Like most anything either Heaven or Hell has a hand in, really. Humans at least have heart.

“Are we getting any closer, do you think?” she says instead.

Crowley doesn’t immediately reply. The uncomfortable fact is that still -- persistently -- despite how they follow the wreckage and the sounds of War, he still feels absolutely no trace of Aziraphale. Every time she asks, it forces him to confront the reality that maybe, _maybe--_

“Let’s stop the car,” she says, opening her bag to retrieve her pendulum. “I want to try again. Maybe I can at least pick up some kind of -- _path_ we should be following -- ley lines!” 

Wincing, Crowley was worried she’d say that. He doesn’t want to go through it again; doesn’t want her to try only to report that Aziraphale is nowhere to be found. He can’t take it; there’s only so many times he can swallow that omen down. 

“Not to be rude,” Crowley offers, “but do you maybe want to give it a rest?”

Rest is probably what Anathema needs, given the dark circles around her eyes when she whips around to glare daggers at him.

“At least I’m trying,” she insists. “Do you have any better ideas?”

_Or one, single, better idea?_

Working his jaw from side to side, Crowley considers her for a moment before he hits the brakes. “You know, I don’t think this is working out,” he muses, and Anathema’s eyes widen.

“Excuse me?”

“S’my fault, really,” Crowley continues, shrugging. “I haven’t worked alone for a thousand years... kinda wanted the company for the drive. But I think this is enough.”

More than enough. He should never have dragged her out here in the first place. 

With a snap of his fingers, the passenger door swings open in clear invitation and Anathema gawks at him. “So, you’re going to leave me here?” she accuses. “In the middle of a wasteland?”

Crowley waves his hand dismissively. “No, I’ll pop you back somewhere,” he says as if he’s being terribly generous. “Back to your little beau in old Tadfield. Somewhere else, if you’d rather. This has gone on for too long as it is.”

“You’re being ridiculous. I’m staying with you,” she insists.

So awfully stubborn. So convinced that her good natured efforts are going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things, when it’s been proven time and time again that they won’t. He should have left her with the first group of survivors she’d taken a shine to -- at least she’d have been productive there, doing some kind of good instead of standing around the middle of the desert with a book and a bauble. She’s wasted on him out here, and selfishly, he’s let her stay. 

“Look,” Crowley continues, lowering his tone instead. “This isn’t even about you. You don’t have to be here.”

“I do,” Anathema protests. “I can’t leave you alone--”

“Why’s that?” Crowley demands, sneering as he leans over towards her side of the car, scrutinizing as his words begin to hiss. “Really. What’s given you so much sympathy for the Devil? Is this another piece of paper you’re sworn to follow to the letter? Since, frankly, my dear -- as you Americans like to say -- I don’t give a damn about what your ancestor said.” 

For several seconds, Anathema Device goes very still. Then, with more venom than Crowley (even in his time as a snake) has ever encountered, she utters in a trembling voice, like a thread has finally snapped. “You have no idea what I’ve done.”

“Um.” Crowley blinks his slitted eyes when he finds Anathema’s now edged with tears. 

Snatching up her things, Anathema storms out of the car, and Crowley stares after her for several seconds. Really, that should leave him feeling accomplished, but instead he feels uneasy and confused. 

Heaving a sigh, Crowley exits the Bentley, following Anathema where she’s stormed off, her boots kicking up ash as she goes. For a moment, Crowley isn’t sure she knows he’s there, then she snaps at him over her shoulder.

“How can this not be about me?!” she calls, mournful and despairing. “How can you look around you and think I wouldn’t try to do something? Especially after I--”

Some uneven piece of dirt and rock gives out under her feet, almost sending her falling, and she barely catches herself. Crowley winces, picking up his pace, and he calls after her.

“Listen, I’m sorry!” he says, and he hates himself for it. She’s so much like Aziraphale; so stupid and brilliant and again out of his grasp. He can’t find Aziraphale but he can get one crazy American woman to get back into the Bentley. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.” What will Aziraphale remember? What last piece of Crowley will remain with him? “Come back to the car--”

That’s enough to make her stop, but she still won’t look at him. Crowley groans, rubbing under his glasses with his fingertips. “All right,” he sighs defeatedly. “Just... tell me what you did, then. Whatever thing you think is so awful a literal _demon_ would judge you.” 

Anathema whips around, her hair flying around her face, and Crowley wonders if he’ll end up swallowing his words.

“I’m not following you because of a prophecy. I’m following you because... because I’m responsible; I burnt it,” she confesses, her shoulders trembling, and Crowley raises his hands disarmingly. “I _burnt_ it! I ruined everything!” 

“Sh, sh,” hushes Crowley quickly, too frantic to be really soothing. “Burnt what?” 

“The book,” she continues desperately, as if the weight of the admission is ripping out of her throat as she says the words. “The... The _Further_ Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter. I burnt the whole thing. Because -- because I’m _selfish!_ And she probably knew how to stop this whole thing! She probably knew how to help you. But we won’t know now, and it’s all my fault. I could have -- I could have stopped all of this!” 

She cries in earnest now, great big sobs heaving her whole chest and catching in her throat, and Crowley stares uselessly at her with his hands half-raised. Hands that, quite stiffly and quite belatedly, slowly lower to squeeze gently at her upper arms.

_Oh, don’t be an idiot_ , says a voice in his head that sounds terribly like Aziraphale. _Do it properly._

Giving in: a demon wraps his arms around the descendent of a witch, and holds her tight as she sobs into his chest.

\--

**5 HRS A.A.**

In Crowley’s flat, it’s the ghost of burnt books that brings Aziraphale very close to tears. 

“It’ll be exciting to start over,” he says, seeming like he’s trying to convince himself even as he says it. “I uh... I can enjoy the thrill of hunting them all down again! Yes. That’s something. If you don’t mind, that is? I certainly wouldn’t want to impose.” 

“Angel,” Crowley starts, edging closer. 

“It’ll look quite nice, with the plants, I think,” Aziraphale continues, as if the moment he stops speaking the grief will choke him. “There’s that old adage: _if you have a garden in your library, everything will be complete._ Cicero was quite lovely with his words. Did you ever meet him?” 

“Angel,” Crowley repeats, gently gently -- and Aziraphale’s shoulders tremble.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he presses fingers to his eyelids, as if it will help. He looks so tired, Crowley thinks. He’s never looked so tired in six thousand years. “You’ve been so kind to invite me here, and all I can do is --”

Crowley has spent more time quelling the instinct to touch him than he dares to count. Centuries of abandoned reaches, of half expectant silences, of wishing desperately that Aziraphale would give him some kind of permission and receiving none. He’s made himself fine with that. He could survive off of glances, and companionable smiles. The way Aziraphale glows through every little favour he offered was enough to nourish him. 

And if he hadn’t done enough to starve the feelings off completely, well at least maybe he could train himself out of the constant desire to hold onto him.

Then a sob escapes Aziraphale’s lips, and for the first time since he slithered onto this beautiful, wretched planet, Crowley lets himself reach forward to pull Aziraphale in close.

“I know,” he says hoarsely, his hands shaking as he tucks Aziraphale’s head down into his chest. Aziraphale’s hair is so soft under his cheek, under his nose. His back trembles under Crowley’s palm. “I know, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

For a moment it’s all they can do to stand there, clutching each other in Crowley’s dark hallway. Aziraphale doesn’t pull away -- and Crowley is waiting for it -- instead he seems to give in to the touch altogether, deflating into the embrace as if Crowley is the only thing in the world keeping him upright in this moment. A reckless thought. 

Eventually, Aziraphale seems to try and collect himself -- perhaps a little prematurely, given the lingering tremble in his fingers as he smooths out the lapel in Crowley’s coat. Still, he doesn’t step back, “Well, it isn’t all bad,” he declares tentatively. His voice is quiet and uncertain, despite the confidence of his words. “I have a place to start over, and I-- I have you.” 

He glances up, meeting Crowley’s stare as if looking for his acceptance or denial, and Crowley’s mouth feels dry. 

“Yeah,” he utters thickly. “You’ve got me.” 

He thinks of the way Aziraphale had looked at him, seemingly a lifetime ago now, his pale hair haloed by neon lights. Crowley clutching that stupid, tartan thermos with his pulse rushing in his ears. Maybe someday, he had said. Crowley had known then. He’d understood what that meant, the sacrifice inherent to the words.

Aziraphale, perfect, indulgent Aziraphale, puts a hand to the side of his face. The pad of his perfectly manicured thumb traces the dip at the corner of Crowley’s mouth, and Crowley thinks that maybe this is the end of the world after all. It seems so unlikely that he should get what he wants if it isn’t.

“Angel?” he breathes, so still, one hand still lingering stupidly at the back of Aziraphale’s head.

“Yes, dear,” Aziraphale replies, an answer to a question that Crowley has never been brave enough to ask, and then he leans in. 

\--

Half a day’s drive from Eden, and Crowley prepares himself for the worst. Anathema has been silent for hours; not reading or scribbling away in her journals, just... quiet. She stares out the window, watching the horizon as if waiting for some sign of their destination.

There should be a wall there, Crowley thinks, climbing up the sky in the distance, locking away all the green. It’s not often that he feels displaced in time -- that’s Aziraphale, with his outdated clothes and his fondness for things long since past-- but he does right now. It all feels too strange and it comes with the abrupt, aching realization that he’s been here for a very long time.

They had met here, at the very beginning. He remembers looking up at Aziraphale (he’s always looking up at Aziraphale) on the wall, his wings glinting in the sun. The sight of him had washed over Crowley in a way that felt Holy, but that he had never experienced at the sight of any other angel. That sun-soaked warmth he would become so familiar with it.

He had liked the feeling of his hair tangling down against his own shoulders in the wind. He had liked the feeling of his legs underneath him, standing there next to Aziraphale like he was meant to do it.

“Have you been here before?” Anathema asks, glancing at him curiously, speaking as if she can read his mind. Then again, maybe she did. She’s supposed to be able to do that after all. “Do you remember it?”

It’s unrecognizable now; swept as clean as the rest of the desert they’ve been trekking across for so many weeks. Still, it stirs something deep at Crowley’s core. 

“Yeah,” he answers, his eyes fixed on the place where the wall should be. “Yeah.”

Without another word, Anathema reaches out, squeezing her fingers over his where they grip the steering wheel.

\--

**5 HRS A.A.**

When Aziraphale first kisses him, the contact is so featherlight, so gentle, as if he’s still waiting for something to happen -- if not Crowley’s denial, then maybe some Almighty intervention... but neither come. He kisses one corner of Crowley’s mouth, then the other, before laying their lips together properly, and Crowley utters a guttural noise like relief. His hand tightening into the soft, pale strands of Aziraphale’s hair, Crowley pulls him close and opens his mouth up with one firm, slow sweep of his tongue. 

Aziraphale moans and Crowley swallows the sound up, flicking his tongue against the edges of his teeth and tracing the roof of his mouth, trying to get himself a taste of every part of him. Crowley kisses him like he intends to map out the shape of him with his tongue. He kisses him like he’s starving. 

Hands curling around firm fistfuls of Crowley’s coat and tugging, Aziraphale steps backwards deeper into the flat. The implication makes Crowley’s chest swell, but the idea of losing even an inch of their carefully crafted closeness also feels too much to let go. In an effort to keep as tightly pressed to Aziraphale as possible, Crowley nearly stumbles, and Aziraphale smiles against his mouth. 

“Careful, dear,” he warns gently, the sunlight returning back into his voice, and Crowley feels immediately covetous.

He did that; Aziraphale had been mourning in his arms, and now he’s coming back to himself. Crowley, with his hands and his mouth, is capable of doing that to him... 

A wave of Crowley’s hand opens the door to his bedroom, allowing Aziraphale to guide them along until the back of his knees hit the mattress’s edge. “Oh!” he gasps, not bothering to catch himself. He tumbles onto his back, dragging Crowley down with him, and Crowley tastes him laughing when they kiss again. 

It’s infectious: the giddy, delirious sort of relief that swells up in Crowley’s chest. He can see it behind Aziraphale’s eyes: the disbelief mingled in with agony and unspeakable affection. 

Speaking of eyes -- Aziraphale reaches up, collecting Crowley’s glasses with a careful hand, as if he expects to be admonished for the attempt. Crowley does not such thing, and Aziraphale continues: framing Crowley’s face in his hands to keep him steady. 

Aziraphale holds him like that, and it’s as if he’s studying him, finally allowing himself to look at Crowley the way he only previously indulged in fleeting, sideways glances. His fingertips trace the tattoo down Crowley’s cheek, his thumb smoothing out a stray piece of hair that’s fallen in the way of his brow. 

“There you are,” he announces softly. 

\--

Of all the things Crowley was expecting -- hellfire, a brigade of angels, Gabriel himself -- he hadn’t prepared himself for this. 

Wherever the troops have gone, they aren’t here. Maybe they heard that their position had been compromised, or maybe they’ve simply focused their attention elsewhere for the time being. Whatever the reason, it seems naive to believe that they won’t be back eventually -- that the gate couldn’t open at any minute and ruin him.

They’re still very much in danger. He’s just having a hard time focusing on that at the present moment.

“Oh my God.” Anathema utters quietly, her lips parted at the sight before her. “Another Beast?” 

Crowley had forgotten she was there until she speaks, and the realization shakes him to action. Aziraphale would never forgive him.

“No,” he answers, voice near to cracking. Reaching out, he unravels the scarf she wears around her neck, draping it protectively over her head instead. “Don’t look.” His hands find her shoulders, and he turns her to face him. She resists him for a moment, then must feel the distress in his grip. She stares at him, not understanding.

“Not God; not a beast,” he says, tongue flicking out to wet his lips. Every second he has to explain this to her feels like agony, and the urgency of it creeps sharply into his tone. His chest feels fit to burst. “An angel. And if you look at him this way, it might kill you. I don’t actually know. Go to the car, and do not look. Cover your ears. Understand?”

For once, she doesn’t argue with him. Instead she pulls the scarf around her head to block her peripheral vision, and she runs back to the Bentley.

Crowley waits until he hears the door slam shut, and he takes a breath.

There are ten paces between him and the creature laying in the sand. Its head is turned away, one great paw sprawled out closest to where Crowley stands. Its wings, huge and feathered, are folded over its back. Still, Crowley can see scars along its side, peeking through mottled fur and scales, bright pink and raw. 

Five paces now. One set of wings flickers, but the angel doesn’t lift its head. A look, and Crowley could be eviscerated too, melted down to nothing at all just like he’d been dunked in Holy water. There’s no way of knowing for sure.

_You were an angel, once,_ he scolds himself, knowing even as he does that it doesn’t matter. If this is where it ends for him, it’s a better way than any other. At least he’ll have gotten where he’s going. At the last thing he sees will be...

“Hello, Aziraphale.”

A paw curls, shoulders shift. As Aziraphale moves himself up from the dirt, Crowley has to tilt his head to follow. His mane is pale yellow, so light that it could be white in the sun. His body is all muscle, lean and powerful. That thought sticks out like a thorn, and bites just as sharply. It’s powerful enough that Crowley’s legs nearly give way underneath him, leaving him kneeling in the dirt. 

Aziraphale had always been so content with his body, soft and lived in.

Two sets of wings stretch and then retract, and for a moment Crowley can’t see anything but the glimmer of pearlescent feathers, beautiful despite the sand and blood that stains them at the tips, beautiful, beautiful... Aziraphale has always been so beautiful. Even now, Crowley has to take a shuddering breath to keep the wind from being knocked right out of him.

Then, finally, Aziraphale raises his head.

There are four faces staring back at him, although Crowley finds that his eyes can’t seem to focus on any one. There’s more the just idea of them materializing in his mind -- the curling rack of an ox, sharp eagle’s eyes, the great broad snout of a lion. His human face, too, his real one, although Crowley can barely make it out.

_“My dear boy,”_ says Aziraphale, and the din of his voice seems to reverberate with sorrow. He has four mouths as far as Crowley can count, and not one of them moves as he speaks.The sound is an incomprehensible combination of things: the ringing of a bell, the shrill feedback of electronics, some beast’s roar, and the crash of an ocean’s waves. Angel’s language. Crowley can understand it easily enough; he merely lost the ability to speak it in return once his tongue became forked. “ _I didn’t think you would come.”_

Which means of course, that he thought Crowley _couldn’t_ come. Afterall, he’s never left Aziraphale hanging before.

“I couldn’t find you,” Crowley replies softly, his feet carrying him quickly forward now, no thought about it. His skin hasn’t melted off, and as far as he can tell he hasn’t gone mad at the sound of him. As great and holy and terrifying as Aziraphale is, he is still Aziraphale. A prisoner, but whole. “What have they done to you, angel?”

Aziraphale doesn’t answer. He peers at Crowley with eight eyes instead.

“ _You aren’t alone?”_

Leave it to Aziraphale to be caught up on details. Crowley is more concerned with the sound of the chain the shackles him to the ground, shining gold and as thick as his wrist. He swallows down the sharp, bitter taste in his mouth and crouches down to touch it unthinkingly instead, as if he could break him free with his own hands. Immediately his skin blisters, and he jumps back, hissing as it scalds his unholy fingertips.

“ _Careful, darling_ ,” Aziraphale says, and the sentiment makes Crowley’s chest twist with hope and with misery. Aziraphale has never called him that before -- and maybe he’s saying it now for fear of never getting the chance again. “ _Even I can’t move that; I’ve tried_.”

There’s clear evidence in the cuff surrounding one great paw: the fur stripped away and the skin exposed beneath it raw and shiny. 

“I’m reckon Gabriel’s very pleas _ss_ ed with himself,” Crowley snarls, his temper getting the better of him. He stalks the length of the chain, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. “I bet he thinks he’s very clever. _Eden_ , of course -- of all the self satisfied --”

“ _Please, Crowley.”_

“How long have we got?” he asks, tilting his head up to look at Aziraphale again. Even with the sunglasses, the edges of him blur a little with light. If he pressed up on his toes, stretched his fingers just far enough, he might be able to touch his face, to feel the shape of what he can’t quite see. He doesn’t. “How long until they come back?”

_“A few days,”_ comes the reply. _“Maybe more, if Dagon gives them trouble. I’m afraid I’ve been finding it difficult to keep track.”_

Long enough.

\--

**6 HRS A.A.**

Sometimes, Crowley gets away from himself, and his Other nature shows through: like when his voice turns hissing or the yellow of his eyes spread to infect the whites. Other little things bleed in as well, like now: where he’s coiled all his limbs around Aziraphale, wrapping as much of himself as physically possible around him and squeezing tight. 

“Here,” Crowley babbles uselessly, even though they’re pressed flush together, tight as two people can ever possibly be. “Come clos _ss_ er -- come _here--_ ”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale laughs above him, flushed and pink and perfectly aglow. As tangled up as they are in each other, the request must seem equal parts insatiably lustful and foolishly ridiculous. Crowley is too incandescent to care. “Dear. I’m here already.”

Nevertheless, Aziraphale indulges him: pushing forward until their hips meet, and Crowley buries a moan against Aziraphale’s throat. Hands scrambling down Aziraphale’s back, he digs his nails in, grinding them up the length of his spine. He digs in behind his shoulder-blades, where he’d imagine the base of his wings to be, and Aziraphale gasps quietly in reply. 

It’s never enough to break skin, never enough to hurt. But it’s certainly enough to make an impression, to prove a point, to convey every inch of his lust and greed.

If he had the capacity to use his mouth for something smart, there’d be a comment there: about how an Angel of all things tempts Crowley to at least two of the seven most deadly sins, but instead all he’s capable of is moaning Aziraphale’s name and grinding back on his cock. 

“Stay,” Crowley manages, when some piece of clarity sticks through the delirium. He cradles Aziraphale’s beautiful, haloed face in his hands, and he entreats again: “ _Stay_.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale utters, an ache crossing his face that’s so desperately sincere. “Always.”

\--

The sky does eventually change. Not the way it was meant to, not the way it used to, but it does. The orange haze of the day fades off and leaves them with something dimmer, an odd shade of violet that never deepens enough to be called night. Still, the stars peek through, like holes punched in cardstock.

Twenty yards off, Anathema sits in the Bentley, and she works. The wonderful thing about humans, Crowley thinks, is that they seem to be able to come up with ways of breaking anything you hand them. A few days is a blink to an immortal troupe of celestial beings, but give a human 24 hours and whatever odd little chemicals her heart desires, well.

Crowley has faith that they’ll be on their way by morning.

Despite the war, and the dirt, and the heat. Despite the faint smell of blood, and the sting in his fingers from being burnt, there’s a sort of peace that threatens to creep up on Crowley as he sits in the sand. It’s Aziraphale’s fault -- it’s always Aziraphale’s fault. He seems to soak up Crowley’s fits of temper, his anxieties and lose them somewhere along the way.

It would be infuriating, if Crowley weren’t so wretchedly relieved to have found him.

_“I must say,”_ Aziraphale admits reluctantly, stretched like a sphynx next to him. His voice is lower than before, now that he knows Anathema is close. Neither of them are sure of the effect it could have, and it seems best to be cautious. _“As glad as I am to see you, Crowley...”_ He hesitates, and Crowley turns his head, frowning. 

_“I do so wish you didn’t have to see_ **_me_ ** _. I’m hardly myself.”_

Crowley doesn’t mean to laugh, really he doesn’t. Part of it is just delirium, exhaustion. Underneath that still is the knowledge that if he doesn’t laugh, he’ll go the other way entirely, and he’s not sure that it’s fair to break down in front of Aziraphale right now.

“Angel,” he starts, hoping something clever and reassuring will manifest on his tongue as he goes. He looks at Aziraphale and he thinks he could recognize him anywhere, in any form. He thinks of how seeing him today felt the same as seeing him in the Garden before -- like being found for the first time. That cloying, honeyed feeling of belonging that he’s been clawing to keep for all of these years.

No words come. Nothing so nuanced. Instead he reaches one hand out, sinking fingers into the silken fur of Aziraphale’s mane. 

“Angel,” he repeats, shaking his head. His body feels heavy, as if realizing for the first time the weight that missing Aziraphale has saddled him with. Shuffling to face him instead, Crowley lets his body bend under it, sinking forward until his face is buried in golden hair. 

“I could change too,” Crowley offers, eventually, after soaking in the heat of Aziraphale’s mane. “If that would make you feel better.”

Aziraphale laughs and it sounds like chiming bells and shattering glass. “ _I_ _do believe that poor American woman has enough on her plate without also adding a Great Serpent into the mix,_ ” he says. 

“Mh,” intones Crowley thoughtfully. “Good point.” He lingers on that a moment, resting his cheek against Aziraphale’s mane. “Might not be a bad idea to make the change, though, given the state of things.”

One great wing opens up, curving down to fold around Crowley’s body. “ _Crowley_.” His name, demonic in nature, should sound vile in an angel’s tongue, but it hums like the pleasant buzz of static on a television screen instead. “ _Don’t be ridiculous._ ” 

“It’s not ridiculous,” Crowley points out, his hand idly smoothing out pearly feathers. “It’s war out there; maybe being a beast is what I need.” 

With great, terrible misery, Aziraphale speaks like his whole heart aches. “ _You’d hate it.”_

“Not forever,” Crowley argues, “not if it’s _us_. Not if I can be with you.” 

Aziraphale is quiet for a moment, his wing stays curled around Crowley’s body. He smells so much like himself (that sandalwood cologne, starch, a little bit sugary underneath) that Crowley has to wonder about it. Did he go to all the trouble of miracling that little familiar comfort, given the lack of choice over his form?

“ _I_ _s that what you want?”_ Aziraphale asks eventually. His faces are turned up to the stars, thinking perhaps, of an earlier proposition. He looks down at Crowley as he amends: _“Not the bit about the serpent, dearest. That’s out of the question. But the rest?”_

Again, an endearment. Not dear, but dearest -- it could pare Crowley like a knife. 

“Always,” he answers thickly, closing his eyes against Aziraphale’s chest. “Always been. You know that.”

Aziraphale shifts next to him, a sigh shuddering through him. His tail wraps around Crowley’s side, drawing him in closer. Crowley feels dizzy with the proximity, leaning his weight into Aziraphale’s steady form, and wishing very secretly, that Aziraphale had a hand that he could clasp.

“ _You must think I’m very foolish,”_ Aziraphale sighs. “ _For wasting so much time.”_

\--

Eventually, Aziraphale sleeps. It takes a little bit of demonic miracling to edge him that way, but in Crowley’s opinion, he could use the rest whether it’s built into Her design or not. Crowley is a big believer in sleep, and it isn’t as if they can up and leave with Aziraphale chained to the ground the way he is anyways. 

So Aziraphale rests, his head tucked against his paws, his wings tucked carefully against his back, and Crowley sits next to him and stews. In the distance, Anathema works under the lights of the Bentley, no less than four books spread before her and several crumpled pieces of paper, depicting a plan she’d abandoned, crushed in her fist, and thrown some distance away in the sand.

Sighing, Crowley rises to his feet. Every one of Aziraphale’s countless eyes are closed, and Crowley worries his own loudly buzzing thoughts might stir him into waking. Leaving his side feels like an ache, but Crowley doesn’t mean to go far -- and besides, Aziraphale’s towering figure is an easy thing to keep in his field of vision, even as he walks away into the cold of night. Before he goes, he leans up, and his lips brush the edge of one of Aziraphale’s beastly faces, kissing what feels like the light of the sun and sounds like whirling winds. 

It’s deceptively quiet here. Crowley wonders at it as he walks, peering up at the clear sky above them: as many stars over his head as there are grains of sand under his feet. Pocketing his glasses, Crowley gazes up, and his mouth moves.

“Are you done now?” he asks, “isn’t it enough? Haven’t you made your point?” 

Wetting his lips with his tongue -- not forked, not now, but it always may as well be -- he catches himself. “It’s my fault, then, is it?” he muses, his voice raising despite himself. “How long do you have to remind me that it’s my fault? Look. I get it; I wasn’t Good enough. I didn’t mean for that to catch on to anybody else! Alright? I was just trying to...” 

To what? Crowley wavers, his eyes narrowing, and he tosses his head. “It’s because this is worse, isn’t it?” he concludes mournfully. “It’s worse for me to see him like that, then for anything to happen to me. Right. But that’s not _his_ fault. You made him like that! You made him...” 

Radiant up on the wall of Eden. The first actual Angel he’d seen since he’d emerged from his pit of fire and brimstone. It was supposed to be a way to kill some time; tease an angel and maybe make him squirm a little. Instead, Aziraphale smiled at him and when the first ever rain came in... 

“What was I supposed to do?” Crowley demands miserably, his pace picking up speed as his slitted eyes scan the stars. “I wasn’t trying to bring him down with me! I didn’t want that; I never wanted that. He never did anything wrong.” 

Crowley’s chest twists, and his hands clench restlessly at his sides, tightening against the sting of the burns on his skin. “Are you listening?!” he snaps, in an accusation rather than a plea. “It’s enough; I’ve had enough of it! All I ever did was ask questions, and all I’ve ever wanted is--” 

Crowley turns his head and--

\--and Aziraphale is gone. 

_No_...

Aziraphale, great and monstrous, should be as clear as anything in this flat, decimated wasteland, and instead there’s nothing but the peaks of sand and empty sky. 

“No,” Crowley utters quietly, low and quiet and breaking. Boots sinking uselessly in sand for the first few steps, he runs. His voice strangles, louder and louder as he kicks sand back under his heels. “No, no, no--!” 

_I won’t forgive you for this_ , he tells Her, his heart rattling against his ribs and his breath choking. _I’ll never forgive you -- I_ **_hate_ ** _you--_

“Aziraphale!” he bellows out, the sound of it ripping out of his throat. “Aziraphale--!”

“Crowley?” 

The sound of his name almost stops Crowley dead. It’s small, confused, and so, so very Human, slipping out tiredly from Aziraphale’s lips from where he lays in steadily cooling sand. No horns, or scales, or tumbling mane of gold. Just Aziraphale, squinting up at him, then down at his own dirty suit.

“I --”

Crowley is on him before he can ask; hands deep in his hair, pressing his mouth to Aziraphale’s forehead, his cheekbones, his lips. Any warm place that he can reach. It’s a boon of some kind, but ironically, he can’t think to question it. Can’t think of anything except Aziraphale under his hands and his own heaving chest.

“Darling,” Aziraphale says, the breathless laugh that comes with it still not enough to cover the concern in his voice. His thumbs wipe at Crowley’s cheeks. “ _Darling_ , you’re crying.”

\--

As the sun comes up on Eden, Anathema Device marches determinedly towards them. In her left hand she clutches a black leather journal, stuffed to the brim with symbols and sigils. In her right, she carries a stick.

“It’s a wand,” she explains, ignoring Crowley’s taunting look as she uses it to draw circles around the post to which Aziraphale is chained. The book lies open next to her in the sand, and she copies from it. “Sometimes the old ways are better.”

Five minutes, and multiple adjustments to the complicated symbol she scrawls later, the chain shatters with a touch.

“Look at that,” Crowley tells her, as Aziraphale admires the raw spot on his ankle where a shackle had been moments before. “And no thanks to any old crone’s directions, either. Who needs any _Further Prophecies_ , eh? Better off without them.”

Anathema smiles proudly and Crowley grins back. Pausing, Aziraphale glances between them.

“What book?” he asks, then, as if he’s afraid of the answer: “What happened to the book?”

Mm, right. Crowley realizes, very abruptly, that the subject of a new book of prophecy and the subsequent burning thereof might make Aziraphale as equally dangerous to Anathema Device as he was in the shape of a Holy Beast. 

“Er,” Crowley enunciates, stretching his neck and shrugging evasively. “Best not to speculate.”

Wrapping an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders, he starts to lead him off to the car. He turns around once behind Aziraphale’s back, to shake his head _very_ firmly at the confused witch trailing behind them.

\--

They leave one of the houseplants in Aziraphale’s place. It’s one of Crowley’s favourites: a big, lush Croton plant with green and red leaves -- more of a shrub now, than something that should be kept in a pot in the back of a car anyways. Aziraphale puts his palm to the ground and the earth softens and heals, just enough for the roots to take.

“Aren’t you worried they’ll just kill it?” Anathema asks, touching delicately at the leaves before stepping back to admire it. “When they come back?”

“A little,” Aziraphale answers honestly, but he smiles as he does. “But this was sacred ground, once, a place for beginnings. I think perhaps it just needed to be reminded of the fact. I’m not sure that anyone could kill that completely, no matter how hard they might try. It’ll be a garden again before you know it.”

As if in agreement, the plant seems to stand up straighter, its stalks reaching towards the sun.

“So what do we do now?” 

As grateful as he had been for the company on the way up, Crowley can’t help but feel some relief to see Aziraphale climb in the passenger seat next to him. It’s his place, really, same as the bookshop was, same as the bench in the park was theirs. It’s good to have things back where they belong.

In the back, Anathema idly braids her own hair, her books spread around her where pots and leaves had been.

“Tadfield first,” she pipes up, though she doesn’t glance away from the window, and Aziraphale nods in agreement.

“Tadfield, then,” Crowley repeats, drumming his fingertips on the steering wheel. He winces, having forgotten the burns, and Aziraphale frowns. Reaching for Crowley’s wrist, he brings them to his lips for a prim, chaste kiss. The wounds disappear. 

“It’ll be a long drive,” Crowley warns, although when Aziraphale slides their hands together and rests them against his thigh, he can’t say he’s very concerned.

Ahead of them clouds are gathering, pale grey and lazy. When the rain begins to drizzle down, light and refreshing, Crowley turns on the wipers.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Crotons are known for their color-changing foliage. Do with that what you will.


End file.
